She should have moved. She should have stopped him. The events of the past had taught her the bitter consequences of emotional involvement. She had sworn never again to jump into a relationship with a man she didn’t know inside and out. Besides, this was business. Rafael was just one more athlete to be added to the long list she’d interviewed and be treated with the same objectivity. He had no business touching her and she had no business wanting him to.
Her heartbeat thrummed with the urgency of an engine revving on the starting line. She held her breath, waiting, watching, as his mouth drew closer.
She should have stopped him.
But she didn’t.
CHAPTER FIVE
WHEN RAFAEL’S LIPS grazed hers, Caitlin didn’t protest. She didn’t lean away. She wasn’t sure she continued to breathe. Not when every emotion she had felt since the instant she’d met him had been honed down to one: desire. Unexplainable. Unbeatable. Unquenchable.
Undeniable.
His fingers were still tangled with hers, warm against her flesh. In an unconscious gesture, she lifted her free hand, placed her palm against his chest. His muscles were rock hard and she could feel his heartbeat, jerking and scrambling in time with hers.
His mouth traveled down the length of her throat, leaving a trail of heat. She let her breath out slowly between her teeth to keep from moaning. It didn’t matter whether she trusted him or not, she thought hazily. Didn’t matter what she knew about him, what she didn’t know, what she thought she knew. All that mattered was that she was here now, with him.
His mouth settled on hers. Gently, this time. Not with the abrupt and shocking flash of heat she’d felt when he kissed her before. This was warm, lazy seduction.
Her lips parted beneath his. He tasted of wine and hot spices, and she melted, slowly, luxuriously, beneath his touch.
What was he doing to her? How could he make her feel so many different things in so short a time?
When his mouth shifted on hers, the kiss tumbled her deeper, bombarding her with emotions she had no defense against. She could tell herself again and again that she wouldn’t fall for this man. That she couldn’t fall for a man she barely knew. But her heart was already laughing at logic.
Yet, a tiny part of her mind that remained lucid reminded her that giving her heart away hurt.
Still, she wanted him, she thought feverishly. She wanted him, and damn the consequences.
That last thought came so clearly, so simply. And started sharp wings of panic fluttering in her belly.
With an effort, she thrust the heel of her hand against his chest, and felt the corded strength in him as she eased back on her stool. Fighting to catch her breath, she stared at Rafael and saw the hunger that gripped her mirrored in his eyes.
The knowledge his desire matched hers played havoc with her fast-shredding common sense. What kind of power did he have that he could turn her from a sensible, responsible woman into a trembling puddle of need?
“This isn’t…” She drew away, let her hand drop from his chest. He kept his fingers linked with hers.
“This isn’t, what?” His voice was very quiet, with rough edges.
“What I…should be doing,” she managed to say. “I didn’t intend to…” She closed her eyes. It was hard to think with desire warring against logic.
“To what? Kiss me?”
“More than that.” Her nerves were shimmering now. Sitting so close to him made her feel caught. Defenseless. Out of control. She tugged her hand from his and stood.
A wave of dizziness hit her and she gripped the back of the stool. She wasn’t light-headed, she told herself. She’d simply risen too quickly.
“Get involved,” she answered. “If I keep kissing you, I’ll get involved with you. That’s not what I want.”
“Why not?” He rose, too, but with an ease that seemed to move muscle by muscle. He reached out for the braid that draped over one of her shoulders, then trailed his fingertips down the knotted cable. “Why don’t you want to get involved?”
“Because I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are.”
“Isn’t that why people enter into relationships? To get to know each other?”
“That’s one reason. Unfortunately, sometimes all they learn is what a huge mistake they’d made by hooking up.”
His fingers slid from her braid. “You sound like you’re talking from experience.”
“I am.” She tightened her grip on the back of the stool.
It occurred to her she could be perverse, refuse to explain anything about her past, just as Rafael had done countless times. But she had pulled away from him twice and she wanted him to understand why. Needed him to understand.
“My first job out of college was writing obits for my home-town newspaper. When an opening came up covering sports, I talked the editor into giving me a try. About that same time I met a guy named Thane Summers.” Caitlin paused. It was hard, even now, to say his name.
“He worked as an on-air reporter for a local station. He was handsome and charismatic and was determined to move up to an anchor job at a cable-news network.”
Because her throat had gone dry, Caitlin retrieved her glass off the counter, took a bracing sip of wine. “We’d dated about six months when an armed man started confronting women in the parking lots of various health clubs. He assaulted and robbed them.”
She replaced her empty glass on the counter, met Rafael’s gaze. The desire she’d seen in his eyes only moments before was gone. Now, his expression was impenetrable.
“Driving race cars is your passion,” she continued. “Being the best damn investigative reporter around is mine. So when the health-club crimes started, I went to my editor, told him I’d hammer at him until he assigned me the story.”
“I take it you got your way.”
Caitlin nodded. “I lived and breathed that case. Memorized the police reports. I contacted a friend from high school who was a detective. After swearing me to secrecy, he gave me the name of a suspect they’d focused on. But they hadn’t questioned him at that point because they didn’t have enough evidence to prove anything.”
“And if they had talked to him, he’d have taken off,” Rafael concluded. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me the suspect’s name accidentally got out.”
“There was no accident to it.” Years-old anger and loathing…and, yes, hurt, still gripped her. “Thane had spent the night at my place. When I was in the shower, he stumbled over my case notes and saw the suspect’s name. That same day he announced the man’s name on the air as ‘breaking news.’”
“Which put you in a lot of hot water with the police.”
“Boiling water. The suspect disappeared—no surprise there. I had to prove to the police, to my editor, that I’d kept my promise not to reveal the suspect’s name. So, I wore a wire and confronted Thane. He admitted going through my notes. When I asked why he announced the suspect’s name, Thane said it was because he wanted his station to win the ratings for that period. It didn’t even faze him that a bad guy was still running around free. All Thane cared about was boosting his own career.”
Caitlin clenched her fists against the memories. “I thought I knew him. We’d been lovers for months, and I thought I knew the type of man he was. Turns out, I didn’t know him at all.”
“Now you look at every man with a jaundiced eye,” Rafael said quietly. “Unwilling to give anyone a chance.”
Her chin came up. “My ‘jaundiced eye’ mostly applies to men who expect me to take them at face value. Like you.”
“Caitlin.” He stepped toward her, but didn’t reach out. “There are things I can’t reveal to you. People I can’t tell you about.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.” He dipped his head, his eyes intense. “People could lose their lives if certain information got out.”
“What information? What people?”
“The ones I care about most
in the world.” He lifted a hand, traced a fingertip along the line of her jaw. “I told you the other night that you’ve changed things for me. Many things. I have deep feelings for you, Caitlin.”
Because his touch had her heart thudding all over again, she took a step back.
Just then, his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at its display. His dark brows pulled together in frustration. “I’ve been expecting this call for days. It’s important. I must take it.”
“Go ahead.” Legs unsteady, she turned and moved to the work nook where she’d left her notepad beside his computer.
When Rafael answered the call in his native Portuguese, her teeth clenched. Which was a stupid reaction. Instead of thinking he didn’t want her to eavesdrop, it could simply be that the caller was a Brazilian friend or acquaintance who didn’t speak English. Except that Rafael had claimed he’d lost touch with all friends and acquaintances from his past.
A claim that could be true. Or false. And maybe the caller was one of those people he couldn’t tell her about….
Her frustration mounting, Caitlin grabbed the notepad. It jostled the laptop’s mouse. The roaring stock-cars screensaver flicked off, replaced by an e-mail that flashed on the monitor.
Wire transfer successful. Shipment confirmed. Delivery next week.
Anne
Caitlin stared at the message. Wire transfer? Shipment? Delivery? Anne?
In reporter mode now, her mind instantly read all sorts of hidden meaning behind those words. Both nefarious and innocent. “Caitlin?”
She glanced over her shoulder. Rafael was off the phone and standing only a few inches away.
“Sorry.” She gestured toward the monitor. “I bumped the mouse with my notepad. The screensaver disappeared and this e-mail came up.” She turned to face him. “Wire transfer, shipment, delivery,” she said lightly. “Did you score something cool on eBay?”
“No.” A look crossed his face, a quick shadow, before he leaned past her, touched the mouse and closed the program.
The knots already in Caitlin’s shoulders clenched tighter. He claimed she had changed things for him. If that was true, she had no idea what those things were. He had touched her, kissed her, yet he was as uncommunicative as the day they met.
She gave her watch a pointed look. “If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late meeting Emma-Lee.”
Rafael’s face looked tense, his eyes cheerless in the kitchen’s light. “Will you be on the team plane tomorrow for the flight to California?”
“I plan to be.”
Turning, she retrieved her purse, slid her notepad inside. Her gaze shifted to the monitor where the stock cars had resumed racing. Investigative reporting was all about digging for answers. Relentless inquiry. Focus on details. The Quest.
Since Rafael O’Bryan refused to tell her the truth, she would find it herself.
FOR RAFAEL, the following days were an exercise in frustration. It didn’t matter that his No. 499 car rolled off the hauler at the California raceway in great shape. Or that he’d had no complaints about the car’s performance during practice. Or that he’d qualified for the number-four starting position.
The thing that stayed in the forefront of his mind was his relationship with Caitlin. More like nonrelationship.
It didn’t sit well knowing she considered him the equivalent of the half-wit TV reporter who’d betrayed her in favor of ratings week. Rafael kept telling himself he should just shrug it off, forget her and focus on today’s race.
Too bad he wasn’t having any luck doing that.
It had been four days since the photo shoot at his condo. Since then, he’d seen Caitlin on the team plane where she’d settled into a seat as far from his as possible. She’d kept busy conducting interviews with employees at the raceway and the fans who had shown up to watch the qualifying laps.
It was beyond annoying that he’d made it his business to know where she was and what she was doing. Dammit, she was a reporter, assigned to write a profile. It would show up in Sports Scene magazine soon. Then she would move on. And he’d be free of her poking and prodding about things he had one hell of a good reason to keep secret.
In the past, her leaving would have suited him just fine. He’d always been too busy, too focused on his career, too angled in on the next race to take a good, long look at his life. But over the past days, he had found himself doing just that.
And became aware of an emptiness that had been collecting inside him for a long time.
He wanted a life with a woman he loved. Wanted children. A family. A future outside of himself. He wanted to feel needed. Leaned on. He was, for the first time in his adult life, tired of his lone-wolf status.
He thought about how it had felt to have Caitlin at his condo. To prepare a special meal for a woman he cared about and share wine from his homeland. The entire time she was there he had watched her, thinking he might give quite a bit to have her by his side over the years to soften the edges and warm the shadows.
It was odd and a little frightening to admit he’d developed such deep feelings for her in so short a time. But deep they were, and he knew the only chance he had of keeping her in his future was to come clean about his past.
He’d spent hours weighing the pros and cons. Knew that confiding in her could have deadly ramifications. In the end, he had resolved to lay everything on the line and tell her the truth. Then do the best he could to protect the people he loved. Whatever the consequences, he would deal with them.
First, though, he had a race to win.
Dressed in his uniform, his helmet hooked under one arm, he climbed out of the golf cart that had picked him up after an on-air interview. After thanking the driver, he wove his way through a sea of cars, team members, family members and reporters to the pit stall assigned to his team. He was grateful the stalls were chosen by qualifying position, so it didn’t take him long to reach the fourth stall.
Caitlin was the first person he spotted there.
Dressed in dark slacks and a long-sleeved T-shirt sporting Double S Racing’s logo, she stood beside a red toolbox as big as a car, talking to a couple of over-the-wall guys. Her profile was to him, her long neck looking almost swanlike with her coppery hair pulled into a tight braid.
Watching her, a hungry, possessive tide rose inside Rafael, tightening his stomach and heating his blood. And underneath that, a sense of calm settled around him, assuring him he’d made the right decision.
Because of the noise from the grandstands and the blaring of the track’s PA system, he didn’t hear her cell phone ring. Just saw her pull it out of her pocket. She answered the call, while moving to the opposite side of the toolbox.
He felt a sudden urge to ask her to meet him after tonight’s flight back to Charlotte. To let her know he needed to talk to her about his past.
He took one step in her direction, when Denton Moss closed in. The crew chief was dressed in team colors, the headphones he would use to communicate during the race looped around his neck.
“Rafael, you’d better get a move on or you’ll miss the driver introductions. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not start this race at the back of the pack.”
Rafael set his jaw against the frustration he was quickly learning to live with. “I’m on my way.”
He gave Caitlin one last look before he turned. He would see her later on the plane, get her to agree to go with him to some quiet place in Charlotte where they could talk things out.
“CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”
“Barely.” Caitlin pressed her cell phone tighter against her ear as she stepped around the big red toolbox in the rear of the pit stall. It was hard to hear Steve Silberg’s voice with the race track’s PA system blaring and the constant roar of the crowd in the grandstands. At least the race hadn’t started. Trying to hear on the phone with V-8s revving would be next to impossible.
Four days had passed since she told the IT guru at Sports Scene magazine about the e-mail Raf
ael had received. Since then, the language in the message had grabbed onto her brain and wouldn’t let go.
Wire transfer successful. Shipment confirmed. Delivery next week.
Anne
Caitlin had spent hours gnawing over the possibility that Rafael was involved in some sort of illegal activity. And the same amount of time assuring herself she was wrong, that the man she cared deeply about was honest. Upstanding. Even so, anxiety knotted her belly at the prospect Steve was about to confirm her worst fears about Rafael.
She pressed her fingers over her free ear to block out the background noise. “Were you able to trace the source of the e-mail just by my giving you those two e-mail addresses?”
“Is a hog’s butt pork? Of course I traced it.”
Caitlin rolled her eyes. Steve took great exception at the slightest hint he might be unable to perform life-changing miracles when it came to anything computer.
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” she said. “Where was this Anne chick who wrote the e-mail?”
“At the Nossa Senhora Aparecida in Corumbá, Brazil.”
“I’ve never heard of Corumbá.”
“Ditto for me. But since Brazil’s almost as big as the lower forty-eight, that’s no surprise. I did some quick research and found out Corumbá is in far western Brazil on the Paraguay River, seven miles from the Bolivian border. Which puts a big, nefarious cloud over the e-mail’s mention of shipments, payments and delivery.”
“Why?”
“Corumbá is one of Brazil’s main ports of entry for drugs and arms. They’re smuggled over land and via the river.”
Caitlin closed her eyes. Her mouth had gone bone-dry and her hands were shaking. Oh, God! Was that what Rafael worked so hard to hide? Was he smuggling drugs? Arms? Nausea churning in her stomach, she wet her lips.
“What exactly is the Nossa Senhora Aparecida?”
“A clinic, named after the patron saint of Brazil. English translation is Our Lady of Aparecida. I’ll put the clinic’s location and the info I found on Corumbá in an e-mail to you.”
What He Didn't Say Page 16
